California's utilities are falling behind schedule in meeting a deadline that 20% of their electricity must come from renewable resources by 2010, newly issued reports from two energy agencies show.
In separate updates, state energy regulators paint markedly different pictures of how California is progressing in efforts to procure power from sun, wind, water and waste. But both indicate that a crucial piece of the state's ambitious plan to reduce greenhouse gases is sputtering.
The California Energy Commission offered a bleak assessment in its Jan. 3 report, saying there had been little real addition to the power grid from renewable sources thus far. The state Public Utilities Commission, in a much rosier assessment released Friday, said power companies had signed numerous large contracts for major projects and progress was good. But in its charts, the PUC showed the state meeting its goals by 2011 at the soonest.
"All they are missing is the happy face on the cover," said V. John White, head of a Sacramento-based coalition of alternative energy companies and environmental groups. "We're not going to meet the deadline."
In the PUC report, almost all the new power is "contracted" or pending approval, and White noted that one of the largest projects was dependent on a type of solar technology that was still being tested.
"The potential for contract failure is significant," he said. "Bottom line is, we will never meet the governor's 2020 climate target if we don't rapidly accelerate our renewable investment and acquisition."
The California Energy Commission is responsible for monitoring the progress of the PUC and utilities in meeting the targets laid out in a state law passed last year to speed acquisition of renewable power. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature have mandated that the state must reduce by 25% its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2020; such gases are widely believed to cause global warming.
In its report, the CEC noted that although California's large investor-owned utilities claim progress in meeting the state's goals with contracts for nearly 4,000 megawatts of renewable energy, only 242 new megawatts are online today. Even if all the contracts hold up, the utilities will need to add as much as 1,500 megawatts more, it said. A megawatt is enough electricity to serve about 750 average homes.
Municipally owned utilities have a long way to go, too, the CEC report concluded.
